The Eagle flew over the boat so close that Bell could hear the full-throated answering roar of Frost’s rifle, three shots fired so fast that the closely spaced holes they stitched in the wing a yard from Bell’s shoulder tore the fabric like a cannonball. So much for the surprise effect of two yellow aeroplanes.

“And you can shoot,” Bell muttered. “I’ll give you that.”

He had flown over and past the oyster scow in a flash. When he got the Eagle turned around again and headed back, he saw the scow fleeing at high speed toward Weehawken. Seen from above, a great sprawl of railroad track fanned from a dozen piers into rail yards and a vast thirty-acre stockyard packed with milling cows, where, in the thousands, they were herded off trains coming in from the west, bound for cattle boats that would ferry them across the river to Manhattan slaughterhouses.

Bell swooped after him, coming up from behind, firing his pistol again and again. But at such a low altitude, the flying machine bounced and slid in the smoky surface wind, making it impossible to steady his aim, while Harry Frost, firing from the more stable platform of the oyster scow, was able to send another astonishingly accurate hail of lead straight at him. Bell saw another hole appear in his wing. A slug fanned his cheek.

Then a lucky shot hit a wing stay.

The wire broke with a loud bang, as tons of tension were suddenly released. Bell held his breath, expecting the entire wing to collapse from lack of support. Tight turns would increase the tension. But he had to turn, and turn quickly, to make another pass at the fleeing scow before it reached the piers. If Harry Frost managed to get ashore, he stood a good chance of getting away. Bell flew after the scow, firing his nearly useless pistol and vowing that, if he got out of this fix alive, he would order the mechanicians to fit the American Eagle with a swivel mount for an autoload rifle.

Frost’s helmsmen steered for a pier where a gaff-rigged schooner was moored on one side and a four-hundred-foot steel-hull nitrate clipper was unloading guano on the other. The sailing ships screened the pier with forests of masts and thickets of crosstrees. It was impossible for Bell to shoot at Frost, much less attempt to land on the pier.

The oyster scow stopped alongside a ladder. Frost climbed fast as a grizzly. When he attained the pier’s deck, he stood still for a long moment, watching Bell circle overhead. Then he waved a triumphant good-bye and bolted toward the shore. Two big men in slouch hats—railroad company detectives—blocked his path. Frost flattened both yard bulls without breaking stride.